BY GREG HARRIS
You used to hear, "I had this friend who won umpteen hundred thousand dollars for almost nothing in a lottery syndicate". In the past year it has more likely been, "I had this friend who got involved in an internet company and made hundreds of thousands of dollars with almost no effort".
In dreams of fortune, the internet rates pretty highly. So many people have struck it rich, why couldn't it be me?
Without doubt there is a huge amount of money floating around the internet world. This says more about how hard it is to profitably invest in traditional areas than it does about the prospect of internet business.
Whether raw materials, cars, food, or just about any traditional thing you can think of, there is more being produced in the world than can be sold at a profit (or if there isn't, it is because of some agreement between producers to keep production down). But the internet is the future of communications, with apparently unlimited potential. Better to be a leader in the production of electronic books that don't sell, but might, rather than trying to break into the already overcrowded printed book market.
How far does the money get? The next generation of Packers and Murdochs have done well, but for workers in the industry things are pretty ho hum.
Here I am talking about the highly skilled and in demand work force. That is to say nothing of the millions employed in the dungeons of the new information economy, the "call centres". These are purpose built factories where thousands of workers provide phone answers to questions that were once answered in person in shops and offices.
A recent survey in Britain, where there are some 243,000 people employed in call centres, estimated that 6% of call centre workers (double the rate for the general working population) suffer from "serious psychiatric problems". Call centre managers, on the other hand, receive large salaries (typically $120,000 or more in Australia).
In California's Silicon Valley, the rise of wealth has actually been accompanied by a drop in the income of the poorest people. A particularly severe problem there is the cost of housing, where in some areas the simplest shack will be priced as a mansion. Silicon Valley real estate prices alone are enough to destroy the myth that we are moving into a virtual world divorced from geography.
This even affects the professions in demand: programmers, multimedia designers, communications engineers, support specialists and so on. For workers in the area, an apparently huge wage may be insufficient to pay a mortgage.
The traditional fortress of the computer industry was IBM, renowned for its hostility to unions. While IBM's fortunes have faded, its anti-union attitudes have remained within the industry.
This is encouraged by the offer of company shares in the new internet "dotcom" companies. Workers generally accept substantially worse pay and conditions in return for shares.
It isn't just a question of decent superannuation. The "new economy" is accompanied by 12-hour plus days, no pay or late pay and a severely abusive management style. (When conditions become too extreme, the final response is to change employer rather than to organise for better conditions.) These days, to add insult to injury, the shares are often worth nothing.
One web site which is lifting the lid on a lot of these practices is the hugely popular . Run as a publicity stunt by its founder, the site currently lists more than 700 internet companies that are failing or have failed.
The site includes material provided by workers in these companies about the attitudes of their management. It is a welcome antidote to the mass media glorification of the new dotcom bosses.